Modern portable electronic devices, such as that described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/795,153, enable users to carry a physically small storage device with the user's computing environment and to attach it to a physically larger information processing device (e.g. a personal computer or PC) and personalize the larger device. As used herein, a “portable storage device” or “portable device” is any electronic device that includes sufficient storage capacity to operate according to the various embodiments of the invention, and is not necessarily a device whose principal function is storage. For example a mobile telephone can include enough information storage capacity to store the personal computing environment of a user. We call such portable devices “native devices” and the computer to which they are connected, a host system. If the host system is booted from the native device the native device essentially needs to stay connected to the host system and there is a need for emulation support for performing all or part of the function provided by the native device. However, one may also connect the native device to the host system over a USB wire to simply charge its battery using the USB power supply. Even in this case emulation support can be desirable.
A difficulty arises when the native device is connected to the host system in this fashion and the user wants to use the native device for its native function while using the host system because the native function of the native device may be inaccessible. For instance when the native device is a mobile phone, it may not be convenient for the user to answer an incoming phone call easily since the phone is connected to the host device by a wire. Therefore, there is a need for a method and system that overcomes the above difficulty. Other common native devices where this problem exists include MP3 players, game units, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), and the like.